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Alabama School of Law's faculty appointments search includes needs in labor and employment law. The announcement:

Assistant Professor / Associate Professor / Professor

The University of Alabama School of Law anticipates making at least two tenured or tenure-track appointments to its faculty, to begin in the 2016-2017 academic year. The Faculty Appointments Committee seeks applications from entry-level candidates with excellent academic records and demonstrated potential for exceptional teaching and scholarly achievement. We also welcome applications from lateral candidates who possess outstanding academic credentials, including demonstrated teaching ability and a record of distinguished scholarship. Although positions are not necessarily limited by subject matter, we are particularly interested in the following academic subject areas: business law, commercial law, employment law, family law, and labor law. Most candidates will have a J.D. degree from an accredited law school. Exceptional candidates who possess an advanced degree, such as a Ph.D., and who have scholarly interests related to the law involving interdisciplinary, jurisprudential, empirical, or social scientific work may be considered even without holding a law degree. The University of Alabama embraces and welcomes diversity in its faculty, student body, and staff; accordingly, the School of Law actively welcomes applications from persons who would add to the diversity of our academic community. Salary, benefits, and research support are nationally competitive. The School of Law will treat all nominations and applications as confidential, subject to requirements of state and federal law. Interested candidates should apply online at facultyjobs.ua.edu. The positions will remain open until filled. Please refer any questions about the hiring process to Professor Julie A. Hill, Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee for the 2015-2016 academic year (email: facappts@law.ua.edu).

The annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL) will be held at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Sept. 11-12, 2015, in Bloomington, Indiana. This conference, now in its tenth year, brings together labor and employment law professors from across the country. It offers participants the opportunity to present works-in-progress to a friendly and knowledgeable audience.

Congratulations to blogger emeritus and our friend Paul Secunda (Marquette), who has been awarded a Senior Fullbright Scholar award for this fall. He will be teaching and conducting research on the national pension program in Australia. Paul will become a senior fellow at the Melbourne University Law School, teaching courses and conducting research on the Australian Superannuation workplace pension system, which is widely considered to be a global benchmark for workplace pension programs. You can get more detail from Marquette's press release. Great work, and wonderful news, Paul!

With right to work on the agenda and in the public eye in Wisconsin, it only makes sense that Milwaukee's NPR affiliate WUWM would turn to Paul Secunda, our friend and blogger emeritus. Paul was a guest on "Lake Effect," with this introduction: "As a potential debate over right-to-work laws looms in Wisconsin, we get some historical perspective on such legislation, and more insight into the impact it could have on labor and politics in the Badger State." Follow the link to listen to the whole thing, or find just Paul's segment on this page. Nice work, Paul!

Thanks to Monique Lillard (Idaho), chair of the AALS Labor Relations and Employment section and Natasha Martin (Seattle), chair of the AALS Employment Discrimination section for sending along the joint newsletter of the two sections for posting. Download it while it's hot: Download Joint Newsletter for AALS Sections

The Southeastern Association of Law Schools holds its annual meeting every summer at the end of July/beginning of August, and planning for next year's programming has started. For the past several years, a workshop for labor and employment law has taken place over several of the days. Michael Green (Texas A & M) is helping to organize the workshop for next summer. If you are interested in participating, feel free to get in touch with him: mzgreen@law.tamu.edu. Some suggestions already made include panels or discussion groups on whistleblowing, joint employer issues, termination for off-duty conduct (including recent NFL scandals), disability and UPS v. Young, and a junior scholars workshop.

One additional piece of programming already proposed is a discussion group on attractiveness issues in Employment Discrimination cases. Wendy Greene is helping to organize it, so get in touch with her if you are interested in participating on that topic.

And regardless of whether you get in touch with Michael or Wendy, you should think about proposing programming for the annual meeting if you are at all interested and regardless of the topic. The meeting is surprisingly (because of the lovely environs) substantive, and the environment is very relaxed and is designed to be egalitarian. Here are the details:

The SEALS website www.sealslawschools.org is accepting proposals for panels or discussion groups for the 2015 meeting which will be held at the Boca Raton Resort & Club http://www.bocaresort.com/ Boca Raton, Florida, from July 27 to Aug. 2. You can submit a proposal at any time. However, proposals submitted prior to October 31st are more likely to be accepted.

This document explains how to navigate SEALS, explains the kinds of programs usually offered, and lays out the rules for composition of the different kinds of programming: Download Navigating submission. The most important things the Executive Director emphasizes are these: First, SEALS strives to be both open and democratic. As a result, any faculty member at a SEALS member or affiliate school is free to submit a proposal for a panel or discussion group. In other words, there are no "section chairs" or "insiders" who control the submissions in particular subject areas. If you wish to do a program on a particular topic, just organize your panelists or discussion group members and submit it through the SEALS website. There are a few restrictions on the composition of panels (e.g., panels must include a sufficient number of faculty from member schools, and all panels and discussion groups should strive for inclusivity). Second, there are no "age" or "seniority" restrictions on organizers. As a result, newer faculty are also free to submit proposals. Third, if you wish to submit a proposal, but don't know how to reach others who may have an interest in participating in that topic, let Russ Weaver know and he will try to connect you with other scholars in your area.

This appeal, to be decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, challenges two egregious misuses of "value-added modeling," a controversial teacher evaluation method that attempts to isolate the affect of one teacher on the learning gains of that teacher's students, as derived from annual standardized test scores. With the approval of the State Appellees, the School District Appellees used the test scores of students who took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading and math to evaluate the teaching performance of teachers who either did not teach these students at all, or did not teach them the tested curriculum. Amici, who are experts in education, education law, and educational measurement, file this brief to assist the Court in understanding how irrational these uses of value-added modeling are. The uses challenged here contradict the very purpose of using value-added modeling in the first place. In addition, they completely lack scholarly support, and they undermine, rather than further, the state's avowed purpose in evaluating its teachers -- to incentivize the evaluated teachers to improve their teaching, and thereby improve student achievement.

Or in plainer terms as Scott wrote in an email,

The basic goal of amici was to educate the court about the many problems with value-added modeling as an employee performance evaluation tool, to better illustrate the ridiculousness (and therefore constitutional irrationality) of the uses to which it was put in these districts. In brief, the districts used the test score data of one teacher’s students on a test in one subject area to judge the performance of teachers who either did not teach the students who took the test at all (e.g. kindergarten teachers, when testing begins in third grade), or did not teach them the tested curriculum (e.g., fourth grade music teachers).

Susan Cancelosi & Charlotte Garden write to say they are working on an amicus brief in M&G Polymers v. Tackett, a case concerning the ongoing validity of the Yard-Man presumption in interpreting collective bargaining agreement clauses that promise retiree health benefits. The brief focuses on the initial negotiation of many retiree health benefits clauses during the 1960s and 1970s, offering context that explains why employers may have agreed to lifetime retiree health benefits during that key period of time.

If you would like to see the brief so that you can decide whether you would like to sign on, please contact Charlotte at gardenc@seattleu.edu by Saturday, Sept. 20; the brief is due to be filed on Monday, Sept. 22.

Thanks to Paul Secunda for letting us know of Bernie's death. He's been descrited as "one of the Godfathers of labour law in Canada." I didn't have the pleasure of knowing him personally, but he was well regarded on all counts. Kevin Banks, Director, Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace and Associate Professor of Law at Queen's University reports:

With great sadness I must report to you that Bernie Adell died suddenly on July 23 while visiting his daughter in Japan. We learned of this at Queen’s this morning.

This will probably come as a shock to those of you who knew Bernie well. He was in great shape, and as vital as ever just before he left.

Bernie was a deeply committed and caring scholar, teacher and mentor to generations of students and lawyers. He was also a great friend of a great many. He made foundational contributions to our field, in recognition of which last fall he shared the Bora Laskin Award with Don Carter.

Bernie served at Queen’s Law for 49 years, including 5 years as Dean. Until his passing, he continued to edit the Queen’s Law Journal and the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal, and to be actively involved in the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace. As Dean Bill Flanagan put it, his contributions to the Queen’s community cannot be overstated.

Tributes from former students have been pouring in today. Here's what a student recently taught by Bernie said to me this morning:

"Bernie was so loved by his students, past and present. I feel very privileged to have shared the Law Journal office with him last year -- to have worked with such a kind and supportive mentor is every student's dream."

Bernie won a teaching award last year, almost ten years after he "retired".

We will send you information about the memorial service once it is available.

Usually when we note the passing of someone, it's a person who has made an impact on the field of labor and employment law, but expressing dismay at the tragic death of Dan Markel seems an appropriate exception. Even though Dan's scholarly work was in retributive justice, we shared many connections. Dan cast a net for critique of his work widely beyond his field, and likewise was always ready to comment and help on others' works, including ours. He was committed to being part of a scholarly conversation and urged others to that same goal, whether they had been writing for years or just starting out. As the founder of Prawfsblawg, Dan brought together people of many fields to write on whatever they wished and to promote their work; he did this in real life, too, organizing social events and workshops wherever he went.

Dan was so very full of life, love for his boys and friends, and generosity towards all of us that his death feels unreal. We express our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, FSU and Tallahassee community, and the broader community we too are a part of. In his memory, it seems appropriate to link to one of his last posts, Thoughts on Work-Life Imbalance from Those Left Behind.

The winner of the 2014 Marco Biagi Award is Lilach Lurie (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) for a paper entitled Do Unions Promote Gender Equality? In this paper, the author conducts a careful and extensive empirical study of Israeli collective bargaining agreements and concludes (in line with studies in other countries) that existing “family-friendly” policies are more attributable to the political process than to collective bargaining, and that trade unions are still surprisingly willing to tolerate collective agreement provisions which embody illegal gender discrimination.

Another paper was selected by the judges for special commendation: Corporate Social Responsibility as Work Law? A Critical Assessment in the Light of the Principle of Human Dignity by Isabelle Martin (University of Montreal, Canada). With an eye to the difficulties that labour law faces today in carrying out its traditional functions of furthering mínimum standards and giving employees a collective voice, the author offers a novel and theoretically grounded consideration of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) is well suited to take on any of these functions. She concludes that CSR does more to protect employee rights which are easily measured and already relatively well protected by law, in contrast to those (such as freedom of association) which are harder to measure.

The International Association of Labor Law Journals sponsors the Marco Biagi Award in honor of one of the founders of the Association: Marco Biagi, a distinguished labor lawyer and a victim of terrorism because of his commitment to social justice. A list of the member journals of the International Association can be found at http://www.labourlawjournals.com.

This year’s winners were chosen by an academic jury composed of Bernard Adell (Canada), Jesús Cruz Villalón (Spain), and Frank Hendrickx (Belgium). The winners were chosen from twenty papers which were submitted for the competition.

Please welcome guest blogger Joseph Seiner from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Joe teaches Employment Discrimination, Principles of Labor Law, Individual Employment Law, a workshop in ADR in Employment Law, and a seminar in Comparative Employment Discrimination. From his faculty bio:

Joseph Seiner received his B.B.A., with High Distinction, from the University of Michigan in 1995, where he was an Angell Scholar. Professor Seiner received his J.D., Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif, from the Washington and Lee University School of Law, in 1998. Professor Seiner was a lead articles editor for the Washington and Lee Law Review.

Following law school, Professor Seiner clerked for the late Honorable Ellsworth Van Graafeiland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After his clerkship, he practiced law with Jenner & Block, LLP, in Chicago, Illinois, where he focused on labor and employment matters. In September, 2001, Professor Seiner accepted a position as an appellate attorney with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C., where he presented oral argument as lead counsel in the United States Courts of Appeals in employment discrimination cases.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina School of Law, Professor Seiner was an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he developed and taught a seminar on comparative employment discrimination. Professor Seiner's articles have been selected for publication in numerous journals, including the Notre Dame Law Review, the Boston University Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, the University of Illinois Law Review, the Hastings Law Journal, the Wake Forest Law Review, and the Yale Law and Policy Review. Professor Seiner's work has been featured in a number of media sources, including The Wall Street Journal. Upon invitation, Professor Seiner has submitted written testimony to committees in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Professor Seiner teaches courses in the labor and employment law area.

Joe is also a prolific scholar. You might check out his most recent article, now on SSRN, The Issue Class. From the abstract:

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), the Supreme Court refused to certify a proposed class of one and a half million female workers who had alleged that the nation’s largest private employer had discriminated against them on the basis of their sex. The academic response to the case has been highly critical of the Court’s decision. This paper does not weigh in on the debate of whether the Court missed the mark. Instead, this Article addresses a more fundamental question that has gone completely unexplored. Given that Wal-Mart is detrimental to plaintiffs, what is the best tool currently available for workers to pursue systemic employment discrimination claims?

Surveying the case law and federal rules, this paper identifies one little used procedural tool that offers substantial potential to workplace plaintiffs seeking to pursue systemic claims — issue class certification. Rule 23(c)(4)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure permits the issue class, allowing common issues in a class case to be certified while the remaining issues are litigated separately. The issue class is typically used where a case has a common set of facts but the plaintiffs have suffered varying degrees of harm. This is precisely the situation presented by many workplace class action claims.

This paper explains how the issue class is particularly useful for systemic discrimination claims. The paper further examines why traditional class treatment often fails in workplace cases, and addresses how the plaintiffs in Wal-Mart could have benefited from issue class certification. Finally, this Article discusses some of the implications of using the issue class in employment cases, and situates the paper in the context of the broader academic scholarship. This paper seeks to fill the current void in the academic scholarship by identifying one overlooked way for plaintiffs to navigate around the Supreme Court’s decision.

A sort of Johnny Appleseed of labor law, Getman has through the decades sprinkled proteges all over the country. Many of them followed Getman into academia. Many of them chose their professor’s specialty even if they’d planned on practicing another kind of law before they took Getman’s basic labor law class which, 2011 graduate Elliot Becker recalled, “some of us called ‘Story Time with Grandpa Jack.’”

“I don’t know where I’d be without him,” said Becker, who this fall will go to work in the general counsel’s office of the National Labor Relations Board.

“I didn’t go to law school thinking I wanted to do labor and employment,” said James Brudney, who teaches labor at Fordham Law School. “It was the exposure to him and the subject that converted me. He has a remarkable blend of realism, sardonic humor and remarkably perceptive insights analytically about the real world.”

While Getman may be sympathetic to workers and the labor movement, he’s not a dogmatic radical who has never missed a Pete Seeger concert.

“His perceptions of the struggles that ordinary shop floor workers had to go through made him sensitive to both the positive aspects of (union) leadership and the risks that leadership might separate from the rank and file,” Brudney said. “He’s obviously sympathetic to unions, but that has not restrained him from offering substantial and powerful critiques.”

Jack's book Restoring the Power of Unions was also the subject of the Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law program at the AALS annual meeting in 2011, which coincided with the UNITE HERE boycott of the conference hotel. The presentations were published in volume 15, issue 2 of the Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal.

Gillian Lester, currently Acting Dean at Berkeley, has just been named Dean at Columbia. She'll start January 1, 2015; here's the press release. Congrats, Gillian, and I look forward to seeing you on the dean's circuit!

Thank you to the regular bloggers at Workplace Prof Blog for allowing me to guest post this month. With their blessing, I will often be cross-posting from my new blog, Friend of the Court, available at http://friendofthecourtblog.wordpress.com/. Friend of the Court will explore cutting edge and emerging issues in employment discrimination law. It will provide in-depth, substantive commentary on each topic and discuss history, theory, doctrine and policy implications. The goal of the blog is to assist courts, lawyers, and policymakers as they navigate complex discrimination issues.

This blog's inspiration comes in part from Larry Solum's Legal Theory Blog and from Scott Moss' article, "Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting the Poor Quality of Plaintiffs' Briefs, Its Impact on the Law, and the Market Failure It Reflects." Their work has convinced me of the need for substantive, online resources and the potential of the blog platform.

Given the sophisticated audience of Workplace Prof Blog, I am hoping readers can provide me with their top picks for cutting edge issues. What issues would you like to read about? I look forward to reading your comments.

I'm sorry to report that John E. (Jack) Dunsford passed away earlier this week. Jack was emeritus at SLU, and the entire community here will miss him greatly. Jack was a beloved colleague, a wonderful teacher, and a preeminent scholar and arbitrator. This is from his faculty page here:

John Dunsford is one of the nation's foremost arbitrators and labor law scholars. For more than four decades, labor unions and companies have entrusted him to settle their differences.

"I view the selection to arbitrate as a privilege," says Professor Dunsford. "One of the highest compliments you can receive is to be asked by parties with adverse interests to consider their differences and offer solutions. It's very rewarding."

Dunsford was a young college professor when the legendary scholar and arbitrator Leo Brown, SJ, tapped him in the early 1960s to be an apprentice.

""Among the many things Fr. Brown taught me was to try to understand the underlying problem of whatever case is given to you,"" Dunsford remembers. "Sometimes it's not apparent and other times you have to dig for it, but if you can help the parties resolve their dispute and do something to help their relationship along the way then you've done a lot."

As Professor Dunsford's reputation as a thoughtful and unbiased arbitrator grew, so did his client list. Over the span of his career, Dunsford has arbitrated nearly 1,000 disputes for groups such as U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers of America and the National Football League and the Bert Bell Retirement and Pension Plan\; Southwestern Bell and the Communications Workers of America\; the International Revenue Service and the National Treasury Employees Union. He has arbitrated for virtually all of the U.S. airlines and their unions. Most recently, he participated in an interest arbitration between Alaska Airlines and the Transport Workers Union to set rates during the difficult economic times following 9/11. He is a permanent arbitrator for John Deere & Company and the United Auto Workers.

Professor Dunsford has held several leadership positions with the prestigious National Academy of Arbitrators, including serving as president in 1984-1985. In 2000, he was named a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. From 1987-1994, he directed the School's Wefel Center for Employment Law and remains a senior consultant. He was the McDonnell Professor of Justice in American Society from 1982-1987.

Except for a two-year break in the late 1970s when he practiced arbitration full time, Professor Dunsford has been teaching labor law at the School of Law since the early 1960s. In addition to a book, individuals and Unions, he has written numerous articles and chapters on labor law, arbitration, and the U.S. Constitution and personal freedom. Currently, his research interest is in the area of church-state relations, specifically tuition vouchers that allow parents the option of using state money to send their children to the schools of their choice.

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog has a helpful roundup of media commentary on the decision by the NLRB's regional counsel that Northwestern football players were employees and eligible to bargain collectively, which Jason and Jeff posted about yesterday. Jon Hyman, the Ohio Employer's Blog, offers his thoughts here. Tom Crane, San Antonio Employment law blog, has posted this. Former guest blogger, Joseph Mastrosimone (Washburn), offered his perspective earlier this year in this post at the Huffington Post.

If you prefer to listen to commentary, here is an interview of Joe Slater (Toledo) on the Scott Sands show on Toledo's WSPD.

In the scholarship category, Thomas Frampton and Nicholas Fram wrote A Union of Amateurs: A Legal Blueprint to Reshape Big-Time College Athletics, published in the Buffalo Law Review, outlining the case for the players. The article argues that oft-overlooked Seattle Opera case, affirmed by the DC Circuit, provides the strongest support for the players--and it was relied upon by the regional director in the Northwestern decision.

I'm sure many readers of the blog have also contributed to stories or have written on the subject--let us know. Post them in the comments or send me an email, and I'll add them to the list.

There are a number of reasons which led to this decision (as there always are with a decision such as this one), but none have anything to do with my wonderful co-bloggers, Rick, Jeff, Marcia, and Charlie. They have been supportive colleagues throughout this adventure together and I thank each of them for providing some of the best blogging content around to the labor and employment law community.

No, for me, it is simply just time to move on to a new phase of my legal and academic career. I no longer have the time or energy to do the numerous posts a week that a blog such as this demands. It's hard to believe, but I have been blogging for almost ten years now (Rick and I started blogging together in the fall of 2004). I still enjoy learning about labor and employment law developments, new papers, conferences, and faculty news from all of you, and I love the great virtual community we have built together through this blog. But now I will become, like the rest of you, solely a reader (and sometime commenter).

If you have the inclination, you will still be able to find some commentary and other such stuff from me concerning labor and employment law on my Twitter feed (@psecundawrkprof).

In the meantime, my four co-bloggers will "labor" on and continue to provide the top-notch news and analysis you have come to expect from this platform. And I suspect that there will be opportunities as well for new voices to emerge on this blog. Please note that a new Twitter Feed has been started for this blog - @WorkProfBlog - and I hope you will consider following it.

I look forward to continuing interacting with many of you by email, during conferences, and in other assorted venues. Thank you for making my time as a blogger here at Workplace Prof Blog so much fun.

To quote Garrison Keillor: "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

Susan Harthill sends word that she left her faculty position at Florida Coastal Law School in Jacksonville this past December in order to start a new job today as Deputy Solicitor of Labor for National Operations in Washington D.C.

Among her other responsbilities, Susan's position oversees the Division of Plan Benefits Security, so I hope to see her in Washington in my role as a member of the ERISA Advisory Council in the coming years.